Raising awareness concerning environmental ethics and the global community, the Cerritos College philosophy club held a presentation on these topics on Tuesday, Nov. 20.

After the presentation given at Cerritos College about the reality of climate changing, students were allowed to ask questions but the presentation suddenly took a turn when politics ran the scene.

“After the presidential elections President Obama, once he had his job secure for another four years, spoke on behalf global warming,” Danny Fisher, coordinator of the Buddhist Chaplaincy Department and the workshop’s speaker, said.

He added that unfortunately during the presidential debates, the environmental issues weren’t touched and neither candidate dared to bring up the topic.

Philosophy and economics major Albert Anaim said, “The problem is how much power the corporations have. They’re allowed to give the government money.

They donate so much money to politicians, they are like, ‘hey I gave you this much money.’ We scratched your back you need to scratch ours.”

The government knows the magnitude of this issue, Anaim gave this example, “the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), has regulations also, like in our cars we need to get a smog check every now and then to prevent cars smogging up the environment.”

So if the government knows these coorporations release a massive amount of waste into our atmosphere why don’t they stop it right?

Students were aware of how bad global warming had gotten, and after seeing the overwhelming photos of hurricanes, earthquakes and fires they wanted to know what to do in order to help.

Anaim said he does as much as he can, “I take public transportation, I definitely have a bike. I don’t eat red meat because cows’ farms produce a lot of methane and that’s bad for the environment.”

Anaim and Tungate pretty much agreed, Anaim continued and explained, “The leaders are kind of owned by the corporations in a way, so I believe that’s a huge problem. They can give millions and billions of dollars to the government and we can’t.”

Fisher and Anaim both said there is an alternative and stressed the urgency of the issue. They suggested that people can write to their congressmen.

Other nations around the world are getting with the program they are going green, however the United States is having a hard time embracing this.

Anaim said he approached Fisher and asked him why other countries were far ahead of us as far as becoming green.

“It could be our culture we are big in capitalism, you know the American Dream, trying to get rich,” said Anaim.

“This nation is known for leading, but lately economical issues are taking their toll in the community.”

According to Anaim, people think economical matters are far most important, but they don’t see without a planet, they won’t live.

“We are thinking we are going through a recession and people have other things in mind their jobs, their careers and how they are going to support their families,” Anaim said.

Global warming is a long term problem; today’s society has a difficult time realizing it as such.

Tungate also expressed her worries saying, “Students are more derived into their personal life and their goals right now, like transferring and getting good grades in their classes that they are not paying attention to the long term issues.”

Cerritos College it’s doing its part, not a drastic change but it is moving toward the right direction.

Fisher said, “Even if we stop contaminating the planet right this moment we still have to face the damage we have done to earth at least for forty more years.”

This type of mentality is what made global warming such a catastrophe world wide.

Tungate said she “doesn’t feel like students are paying the correct amount of attention to this matter, and just because natural disasters aren’t hitting California they will, but as of right now some places around the world are in poverty because of it.”

“The climate is in kind of in the backburn,” said Anaim.

He continued on to say, “we have to tell our leaders this is what we want, we want to become greener we want to secure our future.”